Page 110 of Moonlighter

“Okay!” I yelp. “I get it. Three years ago all I had to worry about was cord-cutters shrinking my subscriber base. Now I’m at the epicenter of the best hacking operation to ever grace a major American city?”

Nobody argues this point.

I put the plate down and put my head in my hands. “Max, tell me the truth. What does your gut say about my personal safety? And my team’s?”And my baby’s. The timing could not be worse.

He sets down his coffee cup. “It’s all about money, Alex. And harming you or your executives just doesn’t seem like a great strategy. The only thing that gives me caution is that I’m having trouble calculating the value of the hack.”

“Why?”

Max’s grey eyes bore into me. They’re so much colder than his brother’s. “Because the payoff is infinite. Secrets beget money, which begets power. Whomever can pull off the ultimate hack can have whatever he wishes. The price is so high that I can’t rule anything out.”

It’s so quiet now that all I can hear is the wall clock ticking. “We have to nail him,” I whisper. “It’s the only way to stay on top of this.”

Slowly, Max smiles. “You’re right. I can do it alone, but it’s easier if you help.”

“Okay,” I say, because I’m not sure I have a choice.

“It won’t be fast,” he cautions. “The trap we’re setting is going to take months.”

“And it won’t be cheap,” I grumble. “We’ll have to order the motherboards twice. I’m going to have a fun time explaining this to the board.”

“You can’t. Not yet.”

“Right.” My mind is full of strategies and problems. The baby kicks, and I rub my stomach.

It’s going to be a really tricky couple of months.

29

Eric

“Walk me out?”my brother says when he’s ready to leave Alex’s place. “There’s a favor I need to ask.”

“Of me?” I gasp. “What could possibly go wrong.”

“Come on. It will take an hour, tops. And then I’ll drive you home.”

His expression is so serious that for once I don’t even argue. “Fine. Let me just say goodbye to Alex. Wait here.”

I find her rinsing her plate in the kitchen. “Another cup of coffee?” she asks me.

“No thanks. I’m going to head out with Max.”

“Oh.” Disappointment flashes across her face for a hot second. Then she straightens her spine. “Thank you for feeding me.”

“Well, I can’t solve many of your problems, but that one was easy. Are you going to be okay here?”

“Of course.” She sighs. “But it won’t be an easy week. I’ve put years of my life into that company. I learned it from the bottom up. Did you know I started out in the sales department selling advertising minutes?”

“That sounds like I job I don’t want.” I move closer to give her a hug. Not that it’s easy with that belly in the way.

She wraps her arms around me. “A hundred and seventy-five bucks got you a thirty second spot during daytime TV in the suburbs, on a low rent channel. I sold so many the price went up to two-twenty-five.”

“You shark.” I kiss her on the nose.

“My father wanted me to understand how the money was made. So it was three years until I had a management job. Every time I began to outperform the old timers, he’d just move me to a different department where I’d start learning all over again. And when I took the helm three years ago, the business media still screamed nepotism.”

“You probably saw that coming, though.” There’s a lot of trash talk in journalism. Ask any hockey player.